Why is it cool to hate radiohead?

definitely not 4/4

i can definitely count along to it in 4/4. i'd post an audio example but i can't be bothered. it's the holidays maaan!

  On 12/27/2009 at 7:43 AM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

lol if there wasn't a time signature it would sound like madness, even if its polyrhythms, theres still time signatures its pretty groovy. Even if it sounds complex doesn't mean it really is, reading inteviews with meshuggah and the drummer from tool taught me how you can make shit groovy but interesting and hard to count by mixing simple time signatures for odd repetitions.

it's in free time. lots of free jazz and improv is in free time, it doesn't have to be chaotic.

in pyramid song the free time piano provides a backbone for everything else to play off.

you could say 'ok, it's in 11/8 but every third bar except the third bar is in 9/8, and every four bars there's a measure of 13/8 and...'

but what's the fucking point?

it is nearly all in quarter notes and eighth notes but the phrases are in no way of equal lengths.

lol I was about to just listen to the song and try to count it but I rightly figured I would have a hard time and or be completely off in my interpretation, so instead I just typed pyramid song time signature in google.... this song sure does spark some fucking debate between musicians on how to count it, it definitely is weird.

From what I gather, reading some debates on this modey is indeed correct, the song can be counted in a swung 4/4(1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 4 & a) the piano chords switch were you don't expect them to amongst other things that make it hard to find the pulse.

If you feel like an idiot that you couldnt count it like I did you are not alone. you will have a laugh reading some of the debates on this song people saying they count it at every odd and non-existent signature in the book.

the purpose of time signatures is to make it easy to 'count the pulse'. it's just a human-imposed concept, part of our musical alphabet.

if it's very hard to 'count the pulse' then it's not a very productive to do to use the time signature in question.

  On 12/28/2009 at 12:27 AM, modey said:

i can definitely count along to it in 4/4. i'd post an audio example but i can't be bothered. it's the holidays maaan!

can't you count 4/4 along to anything depending o n how you time in/ pace it?

not necessarily true, it may be incredibly hard for mere interpreters to count the pulse of things like pyramid song or a lot meshuggahs songs in 4/4. You will sound countless debates about meshuggah songs or for relevance pyramid song but the architects playing them look at it much more simplified while basically intentionally confusing the listeners ears and making it hard to find the pulse. there's all sorts of ways in classical and progressive modern music the listener can be extremely confused and think its only possible to count in a certain way while the musician is simply skipping pulse notes and counting it easily. etc.

the general thing is no matter how complex you think it is... the musician has to fucking play that song amongst others night after night. you think they could simply play in free time with enough muscle memory to play and sing at the same time? its got to be able to be simplified

after reading about this for a while and looking at rationally I guarantee radiohead counts the underlying structure in a swung 4/4 (1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 4& a)

yeah when classed as 4/4 the piano timing is actually really simple, it's just the chords come in earlier or later than they should.

IMO it would be fair to say it's in a certain tempo that doesn't waver (funereal ), but i wouldn't class it in a particular sig.

where's messiaen when you need him. we need a definitive answer on this.

there's no need to make it overly complex though! and hey i was right about fold4,wrap5 so why should i not be right about this, haha

you don't need to trust my hours worth of research but you can trust modey

fairly certain this is in 5.3/1

hence "pyramid" song

  On 12/28/2009 at 4:28 PM, Alcofribas said:

fairly certain this is in 5.3/1

 

hence "pyramid" song

I'm not sure how valid an argument that is. I mean it used to be called Egyptian Song.

nah fools its 13.33/6.66

No way man, its clearly 6.96/96.9

psh, no need to make it overly complex. after careful consideration, i've found it may be in 1/1.

nah dude, 0.5/0.5... but really fast

it's actually ∞/∞

I chatted with j greenwood via skype.

he says metre is "quite fast"

heat/night

this is no heat/night

lololol, this video is gonna confuse a lot of people who know nothing about time signatures, because its really not explained properly at all(or actually completely ricky retardo, the person who made this video is accidentally adding to the debate with the way he describes it count it "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9"? )

but you can hear how the piano chords are just strangely timed into a swung 4/4

when the drums come in(EDIT:the actual drums in the full song, not this video), its really easy to count out the swung 4/4(1 & a, 2 & a, 3 & a, 4 & a) that was there all along

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydc2HYjhO20

Pyramid song (House edit)

yeh I don't know why the fuck he had to use gay ass mainstream techno house drums, that video is fail in general I wasn't gonna post it but I was hoping yallz would get a laugh